Obama’s Egalitarian Revolution

The president should look to the French revolution for the roots of egalitarianism--not the American founding.

“Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality,” ran the eight-column banner in which the Washington Post captured the essence of Obama’s second inaugural. There he declared:

“What binds this nation together … what makes us exceptional – what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago.”

Obama then quoted our Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our “union,” Obama went on, was “founded on the principles of liberty and equality.”

Nice prose — and transparent nonsense.

How could the American Union have been founded on the principle of equality, when “equality” is not mentioned in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Federalist papers? How could equality be a founding principle of a nation, six of whose 13 original states had legalized slavery, and five of whose first seven presidents owned slaves all their lives?

What Obama preached in his inaugural was not historical truth but progressive propaganda, an Orwellian rewrite of American history.

Undeniably, the post-Civil War 13th, 14th and 15th amendments established an equality of constitutional rights. And from the Brown decision of 1954 through the civil rights acts of the 1960s, there was established an equality of civil rights. Black Americans were assured equal access to schools, public accommodations, the voting booth and housing. And Congress and the people overwhelmingly supported those laws.

But if the nation did not establish equality of constitutional rights until the 1860s and equality of civil rights until the 1960s, how can Obama claim that “equality” has been the feature that “makes us American” and “binds this nation together.”

How can he say that our commitment to equality is what makes us “exceptional” — when every Western country believes in equal rights for all of its citizens, and it was the French Revolution, not ours, that elevated “egalite” to a founding principle.

And when he says equality “is the star that guides us still,” exactly what kind of equality is Obama talking about?

Answer: The equality of which Obama speaks is not an equality of rights but an equality of results, an idea that dates not to the Founding Fathers, who would have been appalled by the idea, but to the 1960s.

This equality is not a founding principle of the republic. It is ideological contraband. For such equality can only be achieved at the price of freedom, our true founding principle.

That idea that “all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still,” said Obama in his inaugural, “just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.”

Astonishing. The president is here making the brazen claim that the roots of modern feminism and gay rights can be traced straight back to the Founding Fathers and founding principles of our republic.

But how? The sanctum sanctorum of modern feminism is Roe v. Wade, the discovery of a constitutional right to an abortion. Yet, for every generation of Americans before 1973, abortion was a heinous crime.

And can anyone seriously argue that a barroom brawl with cops by homosexual patrons of Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in 1969 was but another battle in the long war for liberty begun at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill?

How could that be, when the author of the declaration Obama cites, Thomas Jefferson, believed homosexuality should be treated as rape, and George Washington ordered homosexuals drummed out of his army?

What Obama was attempting at the Capitol, with his repeated lifts from Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, was to portray his own and his party’s egalitarianism as a continuation of the great cause that triumphed at Yorktown and Appomattox.

He is hijacking the American Revolution, claiming an ancestral lineage for his ideology that is utterly fraudulent and bogus.

Feminism, the gay rights movement, and the post-1965 civil rights movement, with their demand for equality not simply of rights but of rewards, cannot be achieved without trampling on the freedoms for which the patriot fathers fought. And they cannot triumph without creating a permanent, mammoth and redistributionist state more powerful, intrusive, and dictatorial than anything George III ever dreamed of.

The freedom of all Americans to compete academically, athletically, artistically, and economically must inevitably result in an inequality of incomes, wealth, and rewards.

Why? Because all men and women are by nature and nurture unequal. Some are talented, ambitious, industrious, lucky. And in a free society, such men and women will always reap a disproportionate share of fame and fortune.

The only way to equalize rewards is to take from those who have earned and give to those who have not. And that requires the kind of redistributionst regime the Founding Fathers would have risen up against.

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37 Responses to Obama’s Egalitarian Revolution

I also find it laughable that he claims America is exceptional by claiming to follow equality, when many countries have had equality stamped into their politics long before it became accepted in America, I guess the word exceptional has also being given the Orwellian treatment.

Whether you like the founding fathers or not, to claim that what they created is equivalent to what is nowadays political mantra is an outright lie. I have come across, a growing number of people on internet forums that openly claim they don’t like the founding fathers and want to scrap the constitution, at least they are sincere about what they think, unlike this blatant fraud from politicians still are trying to pretend. Just like everything that seemed impossible in the past, abortion, homosexual marriage, eliminating churches from public life, the constitution will be formally scrapped. I for one would welcome that over what the ideological opposites are claiming as theirs are doing now.

The Constitution forbade titles of nobility to be issued or recognized in the US. Right there it struck a blow for equality– and a very radical one given that aristocracy was normal throughout Europe, even in republics like the Netherlands, and in fact it had been the basis of the social order since the early Middle Ages when old Roman and Germanic military ranks like dux, comites and eorl became hereditary and entitled the bearer to special privileges.

Additionally the Constitution rejected privileging one religion above another, required due process of law, and banned bills of attainder. And although not part of constitutional law, the infant US did away with primogeniture in probate law.

This article leaves me with the unsettling sense that minus homosexuality and abortion, the only “guiding light” of modern “conservatism” is, “I’ve got mine, f#$% you.”

Pat seems to deliberately ignore the Declaration of Independence, which states, “…all men are created equal…” which predates the Constitution and later amendments. Further, Pat omits Cronyism as a means of amassing wealth absent actual talent.

We live in a modern world with modern problems, and to pretend — just because we wish to — we can live in an episode of Gunsmoke is folly.

Like Mr Buchanan, I am appalled that the depraved program of the radical feminists and the gay activists is a top priority of President Obama. This is a wrecking operation against our heritage and will further the destruction of the moral order. However, Pat is also putting on blinders about the dismal U. S. economic debacle when he comments: “The freedom of all Americans to compete academically, athletically, artistically, and economically must inevitably result in an inequality of incomes, wealth, and rewards.” Only months ago, Pat has called our present dysfunctional economy “Casino Capitalism.” As he and other knowledgeable authors have shown, the American economic miracle has been hijacked by a Wall St, Neoconservative clique. This is why America’s middle class has been decimated, our industries destroyed and there is a vast increase in poverty. Obama is the servant of the same Wall Street clique, but that’s no reason to cover up the true economic picture.

Too many of my compatriots (and even co-religionists) stand in reverence to this madman who preaches a hideous Leviathan “equalizing” the results for left-wing law professors, transvestites, abortion doctors, and Wall Street usurers enriched by freshly-printed fiat money. As any student of history knows well, the fantasy of equality always ends with the reality of commissars.

Too many pretenders (including some idiots who write for this magazine) compare Obama favorably with Lincoln or even Eisenhower, and suggest that we should find “common ground” with his supporters.

Phooey on that.

The time is well-nigh upon us to unlock the safeties on the sidearms… before they try taking those too.

Obama’s social engineering (if successful) will end with the harassment of the Holy Church, the severing of the multi-generational family, euthenasia as health care, the further intrusion of the internationalists into the affairs of the Republic, and (most ironically) the hunger and misery of the poor who worship this man now but will suffer mightily under the inflation and unemployment that his policies must inevitably bring.

Only our confidence in the Natural Law (or, for those who prefer liberal lingo, ‘Karma’) should assure us that these inane policies cannot survive the century, maybe not even the decade. But will the President’s Robespierrian moment end with Napoleonic devastation for our children?

The question is not rhetorical.

Now is the time to act before our liberties are sucked out by those who have no historical memory and who confidently and foolishly scorn reality. To hesitate is to risk becoming slaves to this unholy State they are building.

Wow! I always took the words “all men are created equal” to actually refer to equality. In an era of hereditary aristocracy, it was revolutionary to decree all (white) men as born equal – just as it was revolutionary to later expand the scope of equality to include men of color, and later women, and now increasingly to all people regardless of sexual orientation. Hostility towards that last notion is increasingly alien to the under thirty crowd and increasingly a problem for the broader appeal of a graying GOP.

Buchanan’s apparent hostility towards the notion of equality as being fundamental to the American character is surprising. How can one enjoy real liberty in a society in which people are born into castes of inequality?

Well written Pat. Step by step all 10 Planks to the Communist Manifesto (albeit in modified form) have been implemented into the American Fabric. American citizens have been numbered,recorded,cataloged to the point where a citizen cannot do anything in their lives,from cradle to grave,without the state knowing about what they are doing or in some cases having to ask the state’s permission to do something that used to be a right. The collectivist plans that,in the past were only dreams of the Left, are now coming to fruition. And now,in order to enforce the blatantly socialistic agenda of the collectivists in both major political parties,their coming to take your guns away. What was the American Revolution,our Declaration of Independence and Constitution all about anyway? Was it all about paying our “fair share” so that those without the ability or desire to achieve economically could have the fruits of the labor stolen from those that did have that ability or worked hard for their wealth? In the end,it is truly amazing the way one of the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of mankind that created more wealth for more people in history is reduced to the point where the amount of fruits of one’s labor that a person is “allowed” to keep is decided by a bunch of politicians who never earned anything. Pat,your final analysis is correct. The old Republic has fallen and been replaced by a mobocracy that is voting to loot the wreckage of a once great Republic. The founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence and fought to kindle the light of liberty are probably spinning in their graves.

This kind of piece sticks out among the contributions to TAC, and in a bad way.

Equality (and the relevant question to ask right after is, “equality of what?”) was certainly among the Founders’ guiding principles. They inherited the idea of the natural freedom and equality of men from Locke. This equality of natural rights did not entail equal outcomes or even equal political rights, but it is a form of equality nonetheless. The notion is contained, albeit implicitly, in the first three words of the Constitution: “We the People.” The people of the United States establish the Constitution, not the constitutional delegates acting as representatives.

As for Obama’s supposed attachment to “equality of results,” bare assertion will get you nowhere. There is no evidence that Obama thinks this way. In fact, no major political party in the US has ever championed this straw-man position. Democrats (and even some Republicans) might champion a “more equal society,” given our rampant income inequality, but they are more than willing to accept inequality of outcome through the capitalist marketplace.

Also, there are many gay men and women who simply want equality of rights. Tarring them with the “equality of reward” brush won’t make them go away, as much as it might soothe your troubled mind. You might not want to give them those rights for whatever reason, but they aren’t asking for preferential treatment. In fact,
it’s not clear that any of the groups Buchanan attacks wants “equality of rewards,” since equality of rewards and redistributionist measures are not the same.

A final note: Buchanan engages in the sad but by-now common practice of treating Obama’s (rather curtailed) vision of a welfare state as radically different and other, when it has been the platform of one party and tacitly accepted by the other for almost 100 years, if not longer. Wake up, people: we have been redisitributing since before Obama was born.

Our “union,” Obama went on, was “founded on the principles of liberty and equality.”

Well, actually it was. You have to remember what was going on at the time. At that time, you were not equal at all to the king. You also were not equal to nobelmen. You could not be voted into those positions. Rather, you were born into them. So in this sense, it most definitely was founded on a notion of equality in that, we can govern ourselves, and that any one of us are born equal in this sense. We set up a representative government for the purpose: provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure domestic tranquility.

Because it is not “equality” the deviants seek, it is domination. The same crowd who screams for tolerance and diversity the loudest brook no dissent whatsoever from the perceived heretics of their sexual religion. Those who have eyes ought to see what’s really going on here.

even as a black citizen (there’s a laugh) He has no idea what it means to live in the United States as a black citizen, lacking that first hand knowledge — and selected by an elite coprs of white liberals, who appreciate his willingness to cater to a wide path of philosphical nonconfrontational — do as we say mentorship program . . . so he cannot but forge ahead on some frame of his own making.

Mr. Buchanan’s message is very clear and very simple, one would think that a man who claims to come a group once enslaved because of skin color, with a legnthy record od objects of discrimination, would at the very least —- acknowledge the obvious contradiction in the Declaration of Independence and acknowledge the country was actually founded on union first and equality second. maybe 5th or 10th.

Lacking any such courage of confrontation, appears to make this anti-colonialist liberal, a tool of liberal whites n their agenda as opposed to one developed by him . . .

Now I am not sure if Mr. Buchanan thinks whites in the country are actually ready for such mild observations — but wouldn’t be refreshing to have a leadership willing to challenge it’s citizens to higher plain of grasping what is juxtaposed against what they could and should be . . .

Let me show the full part that many here are ignoring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

That no longer looks like the the “equality” mantra that many here are trying to extract, in fact this looks more like some crazy religious thing. The one part where this hallowed word “equality” is mentioned, is also happily ignored by the very same people that assure everyone that religion has nothing to do with the constitution.

The Constitution was the documented reason for war, not the established laws of the nation, hence the 3/5ths, spelling out what they meant by equality — wrong as it may have been — it was the law of the nation. It does not predate the DCI . . . it was the law — the initial building block. As intelligent as the founders were — on this matter — they were cowards — as it pertains to the constitution and the declaration — both afforded the founders opportunity correct a wrong – they knowingly chose otherwise.

KJL, given what I noted above —- Few in the Republican Party believe the comments you made about equality. Certainly, I have not noted that from Mr. Buchanan —ever. I have no doubt that there are afew in the liberal camp as well . . . to include liberal women and that group who mistakenly believe that same sex behavior is normal . . . surveys indicate that both groups are inclined to discriminate against people of color —- now given that they claim to embrace equality as a mantra and have benefitted from expanded priviledges — I think it is a fissue of contradiction amongst democrats — who seem quite happy to preach one thing and support others who benefit from the preaching yet embrace denying it to memebers of their own camp.

The bonds of mutual obligation between various elements, classes if you will, of society is important for stability.

The Founding Fathers recognized there were mutual obligations between different segments of society.

That did not mean absolute equality of outcome.

Currency (money) needs to flow at all levels of society for goods & services of all kinds & quality at all levels of society. This will promote a stable continuity.

Look at Third World nations: They have huge inequalities, small middle classes, and a large poor class (with a very small elite co-opted by international corporations & banks).

This was not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Pat, a significant part your work promotes economic independence and self-sufficiency for America and part of the benefits of such an ‘American System’, as you state, is a healthy working class & middle class.

This would be a society of opportunity.

Opportunities at all levels of society.

At base, it starts with a respect for a hard day’s work done.

Pat, remember the golden rule: Do on to others as you would have done on to you.

That idea, the idea of mutual obligations will promote a healthy, private, economy with limited government.

If the elite abuse the lower levels of society, they betray their attitude that mutual obligation is not required for a healthy society.

“As any student of history knows well, the fantasy of equality always ends with the reality of commissars.”

“Now is the time to act before our liberties are sucked out by those who have no historical memory and who confidently and foolishly scorn reality. To hesitate is to risk becoming slaves to this unholy State they are building.”

Traddy Catholic in Cleveland, I bow to your wisdom, sir (ma’am?). Those two brilliant lines stand out in your excellent comments and sum this matter up perfectly. They seek domination, not equality and the reduction of straight, white, Christian (especially we Catholics) men to the status of irrelevant laughingstocks. You have nailed it, friend.

How can you say our country was not founded on the idea of equality when you start the article by demonstrating that it was? The Declaration of Independence was the founders naming the United States a free nation, laying out that “all men are created equal.” Men in the 18th century were prejudiced a-holes in regards to a lot of things, so yes, we’ve learned over time that what they should have said was “all persons who have more than half a mind.” You say that we are by nature unequal, but you’re ignoring the verb “created” We are CREATED equal. So come to Detroit and lecture the school children how they were born to live like sub-humans because you are simply unequal (better than they are). Never mind any man-made circumstances that may have forced them into that existence. In fact let’s just stop trying to help anyone because God has blessed us nice white folks and we’ve got a good thing going. Damn compassion, right? I can convince myself that’s what Jesus would do, sure. I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan. I get what you’re saying about people having different levels of talent and privilege. Of course that’s true. But it would seem you are copping out of the fact that things should be better for a very large American contingent; and at the same time making people invisible who were born with plenty of talent, but no garden in which to grow it. Is it so bad that America should be that garden?

Well, Mr. Buchanan has never been an advocate of equality in any way, shape or form. Naturally, when he sees the duly elected President of the United States refer respectfully to liberty and equality, he is incensed, because those are NOT the values he advocates for America.

JonF, Bob, KJL, have pointed out all the documentary evidence that in the warp and woof of the infant Republic, however imperfectly, there was a notion advanced that liberty and equality are principles we hold dear, and in time, at considerable cost, we have gotten around to making them more real.

EliteComInc is usually more coherent and factually grounded than this, but “The Constitution was the documented reason for war, not the established laws of the nation”??? The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. We weren’t fighting a war when it was proposed or ratified, nor for some years thereafter. Not one state other than the original 13 could exist without the prescribed process in the constitution for admitting them.

The “three fifths” compromise was a response to the realistic fears of the southern states that if their slaves didn’t somehow count to figure each state’s representation in congress, the non-slaveholding states would outvote them, since free laborers counted as citizens, not property. There was of course another solution to that quandary, which was finally arrived at in 1865.

Whoa, Pat, are you arguing for a return to slavery, for the re-disenfranchisement of women, and for the return of gays to the closet? I get many of your points, especially about the distortion of history, but I disagree with your premise that Obama is talking about the equality of “results.” I believe that is *your* confabulated fear — not his intent or objective. It can’t be denied that income inequality has been rising in America, and the middle class has been disappearing, to the detriment of the nation. And it’s disingenuous to say the least to claim to care about the lives of the unborn, without also caring about the lives of the already born and how they are faring. And when you care about the lives of the unborn, what exactly are you caring about? You are caring about their right to an OPPORTUNITY. The call for equality is the same. The goal isn’t the ‘uniformity’ of results, it’s the equality of opportunity. The Constitution begins with the word WE. Unless there is something *we* share, there is no nation. And like our rights, which exist even if they are not written down, some things don’t need to be said. You mention freedom. But freedom from responsibility isn’t freedom; it’s oppression by another name. People are getting fed up with the kind of “freedom” that allows criminal fraudsters to strip them of everything. Meritocracy, despite its attractions, is not a useful overarching world view. It’s faintly megalomaniacal, frankly, in that it denies the power of things that are not in our control. We are not always able to “create our own reality.” Exploiters and abusers exist. Evil exists. Victims exist. You can subjugate victims further by calling them “lazy”, but do they have the OPPORTUNITY to escape hardship or oppression and succeed? Because believe it or not, the plutocrats are not happy enough with all the wealth, power, resources and land. They are stripping away all the opportunity also. That’s what the rising income inequality is about — monopolizing opportunity. So, I’m not really sure what you have against the equality of opportunity, but I think you should get your paranoia in check. Obama is not a commie, okay? For that I would look to the friends of Tom DeLay who are *not* in prison and are still roaming the halls of power, because wasn’t their goal to establish a “permanent” Republican majority, a.k.a. one-party rule? I believe Karl Rove and Paul Ryan were among his pals. You might want to talk to them, or any other of his cronies, if you are looking into who is trying to set up a totalitarian state.

Mark, your line of thinking is schizophrenic and simply contradicts reality. Detroit is a perfect example of where Obama’s brand of attempts to force “equality of outcome” with more government programs and more labor-union hegemony lead. Strict government control over every facet of citizens’ lives, starting with elementary education, in the name of Industrial Progress, is what created modern Detroit.

The point of historical context is not to demonstrate that the country’s founders were “prejudiced a-holes.” It is that they were men of ideals. Being products of a tradition and culture that preceded the American Revolution, their own lives and actions could never fully live up to those ideals. Being human beings in the real world, none of us ever fully live up to our own professed ideals.

But to abandon one crucial founding ideal, Liberty, for the pathological and impossible pursuit of a skewed version of another, Equality, is wrong.

You can never create equality of outcome. Barack Hussein Obama is living proof that equality of opportunity across racial lines does exist in America. That is the equality to which the founders referred. How much more Liberty are we supposed to sacrifice, how many more taxes do we have to pay, how many new Federal agencies and employees do we have to create, how many thousands of new laws and regulations do we have to live our daily lives under, in order to make all of America a Democratic Utopia like Detroit?

And I don’t care whether you’re for or against homosexual “rights” or “marriage,” comparing homosexuality to ethnicity is incorrect. Homosexuality is a behavior. Even if people engage in homosexual behavior, their sexual predilections are not visible on their skin when they step out the front door, unless they choose to broadcast them to people. If they manage to procreate somehow, their children are still unlikely to be homosexuals. It is not a valid comparison to ethnicity, plain and simple.

President Obama’s egalitarian agenda will ultimately not triumph,because the poor economic conditions of America will trump his equality crusade. Unfettered free trade has allowed the hollowing out of our once-great manufacturing base. The trade issue will be addressed.

The Old Republic is dead, we now live in the Fruitcake Empire. I was born here, but the more America embraces radical individualism the more I feel at home in my wife’s birthplace in the former Soviet Central Asia where Muslim culture and tradition is strong, but not fanatic.

Oh, brother. It is the same “city on a hill” crap. The only thing that makes America exceptional is that international law applies to everybody, except the USA. The crime that subsumes all other crimes, internationally speaking, is the very one the US government denounces most loudly, but has no qualms of committing at the drop of a hat. Of course, I’m talking about invading another country. Do you all remember in 2008 when Sakashvilli provoked a Russian invasion into Ossetia? and how loudly the Bush administration denounced the Russia. Then it was a crime to invade another country. But since then, we have already reached the 10 year marker of our invasion of Afghanistan, and pretty soon we will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. To that we will need to our continued invasions of Pakistan among other nations whose sovereignty the POTUS has violated.

For every step forward Mr. Obama takes for equality at home, he takes 10 steps back with his many foreign wars. How is that even close to resembling progressive?

Obama was talking about equality of RESULTS…he says the mere fact that blacks are poorer then whites is proof of “inequality”…but gays are wealthier as a group then straights, so do we have legislation to take jobs away from gays and give them to straights? Ridiculous. Of course, we know the problem with blacks is so many blacks are born to single family mom’s…1 income instead of 2 is supposed to be “proof” of inequality? And what about Asians, who are so successful without asking for handouts.

What Obama is talking about is more of the special considerations for blacks and browns over whites for educational opportunities, jobs and housing, food stamps, free health insurance, free tuition…that’s supposed to be “equality” according to Obama.

I want to thank Mayalibre for joining the discussion because she (I assume she is a woman) exemplifies the classic contradiction of the statist leftist. The statist leftist welcomes government intrusion to reduce natural inequalities of character, chance, and resources. But once in place, the expanded state ends up producing the worst inequalities of all — subtley magnifying the very inequalities the statist leftist decries.

It was more government intrusion into the housing and commercial paper markets created the “fraudsters” she takes aim at. Even the unapologetic leftist liberals at the New York Times agree with that. (In case you don’t believe me, read Gretchen Morgensen’s surprisingly accurate “Reckles$ Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon,” in which a NYT investigative journalist blames government subsidies for the mortgage melt-down.)

And who makes war if not the government? Who causes more death and human misery by drone strikes and troop deployments?

Yet the answer, in the end, is always more government. We need equality of OPPORTUNITY (why bold? why not?), says the leftist. Hence more and better education, hence more and bigger public debts to further fatten the salaries of the left-wing professoriate, who dedicate their lives to increasing OPPORTUNITY. (Forget that the student loan crisis is the next economic bubble to burst.) The “victims” must be protected, and who better to do the job than more well-pensioned state bureaucrats?

Yet here is the reality: the monopolies she decries are monopolies created by the state. To quote the often nutty, but sometimes brilliant Ralph Nader, “Government always works. Always. It’s just a question of who it works for.”

The statist leftist believes that all will be right with the world if we just let the state tweak the law to protect the “victims.” What you get is a massive judiciary dedicated to the proposition that everyone can finally be equal if we just have more trial lawyers ready to bring multi-million dollar discrimination cases. Hooray for equality.

Again, thank you Pat, for seeing through the smoke, and recognizing that freedom from the nominally-egalitarian (but practicably-monopolistic) state is the best and most certain way to allocate resources away from the monopolists, the fascists, the imperialists, the militarists, and the globalists and back into the hands of ordinary people.

I dunno, Pat. The Sixties were fifty years ago. Hasn’t what happened here back then in some way become a part of our history and heritage by now?

Whatever you think of “modern feminism, … the gay rights movement, and the post-1965 civil rights movement” and the demand for “demand for equality not simply of rights but of rewards” there’s something in the symbolism of Selma and Seneca Falls that does speak to long-established American values, something that conservatives ignore at their peril.

Yes, Stonewall may be an offensive symbol when compared to Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, but isn’t something it may symbolize already a part of what we are as a nation? While it may not have been the right symbol for an inaugural address, wasn’t there something in at least the early gay rights movements that isn’t offensive to conservative principles?

And even if Roe v. Wade is “the sanctum sanctorum of modern feminism,” can we conceive of a feminism that doesn’t promote abortion on demand? Elizabeth Cady Stanton could.

I always took the words “all men are created equal” to actually refer to equality.

It does. But the problem is many people forget (or ignore) the word just before “equality.” Being created equal means each is entitled to the same rights before the law. It does not mean each is entitled to the same outcome in every facet of life.

I find it interesting that we look at revolutionary documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and cry foul when they are used to support radical or revoluntionary ideas of today. Are we all Tories? Is it relevant to underwrite all conservative thought in America based on what the founders knew 200 plus years ago? If they are the foundation on which this house is built, do we disregard modern additions and amenities? Conservatism should be the thoughtful transition from the present to the future, not just the desire to get back to a “golden age” that probably never existed in anything but memory. You may have liked the fifties and early sixties, but I see them as a juxtaposition of Leave it to Beaver and german shepards and fire hoses turned on Americans. Equality need be nothing more than treating others as you hope to be treated. And as far as redistribution, if you have the answer to adjusting the current distribution back out at a reasonable level instead of just straight up, I’m all ears.

Come on, folks. Equality meant equality before the law. The civil rights movement won over the majority of society, because it was first and foremost about equality before the law and within publicly financed institutions. This is a moral principle that ultimately could not be challenged. You can have the discussion if you like about how the Civil Rights Movement (TM) quickly became something else.

Today there are so many laws and other acts of government that favor individuals, groups and entrenched institutions that it is hard to even know where to start a discussion about equality before the law.

Progressives like Obama don’t appear to be interested in removing legal privilege. Rather they appear to be interested in changing ownership by extracting tribute to finance the purchase of loyalty and the advancement of new favored parties. Many of their loyal followers don’t want their society liberated from official privilege; they just want what they see as their equal share. Hence, the call for equality and the debasement of a once lofty ideal.

Anyone who stands against legal privelege will be painted as a pawn of those who are holding on to officially granted power. Who are those that stand for liberty and equality to stand with? Who are they to stand against?

It might surprise some conservatives, but it’s laughable to call Obama a “socialist’ or an extreme leftwinger…especially when it comes to war-mongering and curbing the excesses of Wall Street…

Obama’s positions are like a cowboy with hat but no horse…his rhetoric is leftist, but his positions are centrist…gay marriage is supported by a slight majority of Americans as well as agreement on climate change..and an overwhelming majority do not want cuts to Medicare and Social Security..a majority wangt the super-rich and the CEO/Wall Street bankers to pay more taxes…a majority want out of the Republicans’ “endless war” in the Mideast…

Excuse me, he cowtows to the blacks and browns with appeals to “equality”. But what did you expect? And who created the circumstances that gave him the opportunity to change America’s politics forever?

was it that supported the last 20 years of unrestrained immigration that has brought the end of the white majority?

And who was it that lied us into starting a 10 year war in Iraq?

Who was it that supported the export of American jobs to foreigners under the fallacy of “free trade”? And drove more and more of the old Nixon/Reagan “silent majority” into dependency on government?

Who deregulated Wall Street and legalized the mechanisms of legalized fraud that brought the economy to the brink of depression?

Who passed a prescription drug bill that forced the government pay the tab for whatever the drug companies want to charge without competitive bidding? The very prescription drug bill that is driving medicare into deficit?

And is there any REAL difference between “Obamacare” and the plan that the Romney, the Republican presidential candidate passed while governor of Masscuhetts? A plan hatched in a right-wing Republican think tank?

And really—tell us what the Republicans have done to dismantle “affirmative action”, the favoring of blacks and browns over whites for employment and educational opportunities as well as federal handouts?

Because of the opportunity the Republicans gave him, Obama is expanding his Drone-warfare activities, while yakkying about “peace”…and while 1000 executives and managers of Saving and Loans went to jail under Reagan, no Wall Street bankers went to jail for fraud that was way more costly to the government….

So really why do we need a Republican Party anyway..? A party of old white people bleating about “prosperity’, when their whole record is destroying it for Americans. And they wonder why they are no longer a majority?

They are PRECISELY socialism… for Keynesian militarists and the well-to-do socialists who run (sort of) our banks.

Maybe you think the readers of this magazine are Fox News Republicans. Think again.

This magazine was anti-war when war was “cool.”

On some of your points, you are preaching to the choir. On others, I am afraid you drank the NYT kool-aid. But I wish you well. Stick around. Have a looksie. You might be surprised what real conservatism really looks like.